Birdsong
by sableambiguity
Summary: Five years after the war, the friendship between two dynamic women is long overdue.
1. prologue

**A/N:**

This – above all – is the story of a friendship. A friendship between two women. Two very different, very contrasting women. Yet who better to understand you, truly? After all, when you look in the mirror, the reflection that you see is a perfect opposite.

I'm writing this for catharsis, really. Atonement, because I feel Mai is too often cheated by the writing of the series _and_ the fans—including myself. There will be _implied_ relationships in this fic, and they might not be ones you like, but they are what they are. I'd encourage you to watch and wait and see what develops.

This first segment is nothing more than a prologue. What follows won't be as much "prose;" it will have legitimate dialogue, and action, and scenes and so forth rather than just reflections and thoughts. As always, reviews are lovely~ They make the world go round, and flakes like me keep writing, I promise they do.

Also, consider this your standard, standing disclaimer. AtLA isn't mine. I'm playing in someone else's sandbox.

* * *

**Book One**

**Mai**

_The silver swan, who, living had no note_

_When death approached unlocked her silent throat_

Orlando Gibbons

* * *

She sleeps alone.

Her bed was not always so empty. Once there was night after night of shadowed smiles and sweet nothings and promises of things to come. But those promises turned into realities such as _this is what forever will be like_ and questions of_ is this what forever will be like?_ and suddenly there was a seed of loneliness planted in her heart.

It thrived on quiet moments, like that day in his office not two weeks before. He was lost in his work, such an easy feat for him, and she was attempting the same in a neat pile of correspondence. At first the task had been pleasant, exhilarating, suggested with a smile on his face, an arm around her waist, his breath warm as he murmured that she could prove what a brilliant Lady she already could make. That was five years ago.

Now the letters were nothing more than pruning shears, trimming that plant as it secretly bloomed. His advisers wrote of their lofty ideals and ambitions that were harder to bury than Ozai who slept deep in his cell. The nobility was armed with smiles and coquettish niceties as they lined their daughters up to take her place. Every missive became another stab, a sharp point of those knives she'd long since left behind as a relic of a war-torn past.

When she resumed carrying one in her sleeve, it was another careful _snip_ of those thorny branches. The fact that he didn't notice was a week's worth of gardening.

She had taken to shuffling and reshuffling the papers while he remained oblivious and she remained embittered about how things could have been _different_. What different even was eluded her until one note slipped from the rest, a too-formal, too-ornate script decrying her suitability as a wife. The content was nothing new; it was the climate of her heart that had finally become different.

For one brief moment the thought slipped like a whisper of silk across her mind that he might already have replaced her.

But his very posture erased the notion altogether. The tension in his neck, in his shoulders. Hard—like his father's face, or his sister's heart. A worse fate than being neatly shoved aside was knowing she could somehow be held responsible for the weight that molded him into their likeness.

"Would you like me to rub your shoulders?" was her means of making amends, of pouring poison over that plant, a paltry attempt to uproot it. And he would always agree, give her one of his half-formed smiles that in and of itself spoke of a distance she once had thought bridged forever.

That day he said no, and that was that.

_Snip, snip_.

They tell her to smile. It will _make things easier_. When has anything been easy? It's another word that she has never known the full meaning of in her life. It is not for people like her to have things easy. Anyone who says otherwise is ignorant, foolish, naïve, and she blames herself for ever believing those lies. It was the girl in her that did, the same girl who loved a shy and awkward prince, who trusted a conniving, manipulative princess, and everyone knew both of those had long since ceased to exist.

She would not believe them again. She doesn't smile. Her face, the mask she wears, is the last thing in her control. She dons her gloves and tends her gardening yet again.

###

It was exactly three days later that she felt the first pain.


	2. growing pains

**A/N:**

This fic has made me come to terms with the fact that long chapters just aren't for me. (At least, not in this fic for certain.) It makes me feel a tad guilty; I don't update very frequently considering the low word count. Such is life. I may be slow, but I am diligent. I hope you readers will bear with me. 3

Thank you ever so much to the people who have already reviewed, and to my lovely beta readers! I don't expect to have too many more Author's Notes in the future, so this one's for you, but the gratitude will always remain.

* * *

Fire Lord Zuko has no children. There was a time she was able to convince herself it was because she wasn't ready, that _her_ opinion outweighed that of his counsel, his nation. She could ignore the subtle barbs of the Sages about her fertility, the chittering of her mother as she tried to offer her advice. Tom-Tom was over ten years her junior, after all, and those things _just happened_ sometimes.

Then she heard the whisper. The most hurtful things always start that way, nothing but an inkling, a tickle of a thought that someone lends a voice and it skips from tongue to tongue like wildfire through dry brush. Court seemed made for such kindling.

_Her child might not be a bender_.

It is a larger stigma than illegitimacy, almost more distasteful than being the product of a mix of two nationalities—almost. If a child is a firebender, all other sins can be forgiven, but there hasn't been one in her family for four generations. She will be forgiven nothing. She will be weighed, measured, always found wanting.

She isn't ready to be a mother. She shouldn't care that they slander her ability to produce a fitting heir, that they drag her _family's_ ability to join the royal lineage into question. She shouldn't care, but she does.

And then one day she doesn't, and that is worse.

She had never been happier to feel that pang. A dull ache hovering right below her navel, the telltale sign of her monthly courses come to call. For five long years she'd dutifully swallowed the poison that ensured _her_ will was exercised in one small corner of that vast world. And who was going to stop her? She was giving them exactly what they wanted.

Four more days and there was no blood. The pain grew worse. Late at night as she lie awake – _alone_ – in her bed, she imagined the thorns of that plant buried in her heart had finally pierced the flesh, ready to tear it apart with the next beat, the next breath.

In a fog of insomnia and sleep deprivation she saw scarlet and crimson like the robes she wore or the curtains that somehow, over time, had grown to block out the sun. But there was no amber or gold, no richness or warmth to soften the blow.

It was no surprise that she woke to blood at last. It stained her pillow, her lips—a kiss of betrayal. Even her body was no longer her own.

# # #

In her time of need, she turns to her oldest friend.

The ex-princess' room is comfortable. A soft bed clad in silk sheets, large windows with a scenic view. But they face west, forever taunting her with the sun's waning rays, and silk is a bittersweet luxury when it rustles against steel chains.

Their relationship is the same as it was but different. She is now the trickster, the deceiver, indulging a lunatic's fantasies because glassy, amber eyes are blind—blind to the future, blind to the present. They see only a fragmented past. Zuko can no longer look into them. He does not come here. He does not approve.

She visits two days later because the cough now festers in her lungs. A healthy person would notice the sunken eyes, the tremor in her wrist, the soiled handkerchief that has taken up residence with that stiletto in her sleeve. _Anyone else_ would notice, but no one has.

"Mother, you look unwell." Mai has grown accustomed to the title over the years. She appreciates the irony.

They talk of nothing. There are hidden glimpses, moments frozen in time when she believes true recognition dawns over those patrician features. This visit, sadly, holds none of them.

"Mother, you look unwell." Often their conversations come full-circle, ending where they began, looping, forever looping, mirroring the play of memories in that broken mind. Usually it is a cue for the lady to take her leave, shooed away by the hovering nurses always ready with another draught that will keep the fallen royal a captive to her delusions. There is no better prison for one such as her.

"I'm dying."

Pain has made her fear many things, but that is not one of them. It feels good to say it, to give it the power of the spoken word, expanding and filling the small room until there is no place left for doubt—or pride. She _is _dying. The next breath may be her last.

"Impossible," and her friend wears a tight smirk that harkens back to a past life. "You're already dead."


End file.
